Self-supported power generation device

ABSTRACT

A self-supported power generation device is installed in a high building having multiple floors to realize self-supported power supply of low power and simplified arrangement. Water reservoir is arranged in a floor-spaced manner by tanks set in different floors. Each tank has a conic converged lower section forming a discharge opening coupled to a power generator unit that is driven by vanes to generate electrical power. Thus, by the water head supplied from each tank to drive the vanes for rotating the power generator unit, and with a vertical stacked manner of the multiple sets of power generator units and tanks, a multi-floor water-weight-driven power generation assembly is established. A water collection reservoir is provided at the bottommost location to collect the water for cyclic use. Thus, self-supported power generation for self-supported supply of power of a building is realized and environmental protection and healthy concerns are also satisfied.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

(a) Technical Field of the Invention

The present invention relates to a simplified self-supported powergeneration device, and in particular to a simplified power generationdevice that bases on difference of altitude among different floors in ahigh building to generate water flows from tanks caused by gravity todrive vanes for rotation in order to effect power generation and supplyof the power so generated, together with a vertically-stacked multi-setarrangement to realize continuous power generation, wherein the power sogenerated are collected and properly distributed for public use of thebuilding to ensure safety, convenient, and environment-conservativesupplement of electrical power.

(b) Description of the Prior Art

Electrical power has been commonly and widely used all over the world topower all kinds of electrical appliances. Due to the increasedconsumption of electrical power, the supply of electrical power isgetting short around the world. Thus, large consumers of electricalpower are advised to install private power generation systems, such asco-generation system and diesel engine based small power generator inorder to supplement the shortage of power supply and thus reducing theload of the public power supply system. In a modern society, an urbanarea is full of high buildings and collective resident housing. All thehigh building and collective resident houses are heavily dependent uponpower supply to maintain operation of utility facility, safety devices,and fire-fighting measures. Almost all high building is provided withprivate power generation system, which are generally gasoline or dieselengine based systems. Such systems are expensive and the maintaining andoperation costs are also very high due to the high costs of gasoline anddiesel. In addition, these private power generation systems are only putinto operation in case of emergencies to temporarily supply power to thefire-fighting and public utility systems. Apparently, such systems arenot actually practical. Further such systems must be periodicallymaintained to ensure proper functioning in emergency. This istroublesome to the residents of the building and may cause buildingsafety problems. For the currently available gasoline or diesel engines,the purchasing and installation costs are both very expensive. Thegasoline or diesel engine based power generation systems are bulky insize and heavy in weight. Moving and assembling of these systems is verytroublesome. Also, these systems require maintenance provided byprofessional technicians and this is certainly very inconvenient to thebuilding residents. Thus, in respect of environment protection and thelimited need of supply of power to public utility facility for regularoperation, the conventional gasoline or diesel engine based powergeneration systems are certainly impractical in all respects andparticularly in economic respect.

Thus, it is desired to have a power generation device that can beobtained economically and can be easily installed for regular privatepower supply to supplement shortage of public power supply.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The primary purpose of the present invention is to provide a simple andself-supported power generation device that uses the altitude differenceamong floors of a building to speed up water flows and uses theincreased speed of the water flows to drive high speed rotation of vanesof a power generator so as to simultaneously realize high speed rotationand low power generation of electrical power of multiple sets of powergenerators and to provide continuous power generation through verticalstacked arrangement of the multiple sets of electrical power generatorsso as to establish a practical and simple self-supported powergeneration device.

In view of the drawbacks of the conventional gasoline/diesel enginebased power generation system, including high expense of fuel andinconvenience to move and install, the present invention provide aself-supported power generation device, which is operated on the basisof altitude difference among different floors of a building to generatea water flow of which the speed is increased by a conic convergedopening to provide speed-increased transmission to drive a powergenerator unit whereby simple operation of power generation can berealized by simply using potential induced by altitude difference andwithout consuming additional external energy so that the drawbacks ofinconvenience of installation and high cost of operation of theconventional private power generation systems are overcome.

The foregoing object and summary provide only a brief introduction tothe present invention. To fully appreciate these and other objects ofthe present invention as well as the invention itself, all of which willbecome apparent to those skilled in the art, the following detaileddescription of the invention and the claims should be read inconjunction with the accompanying drawings. Throughout the specificationand drawings identical reference numerals refer to identical or similarparts.

Many other advantages and features of the present invention will becomemanifest to those versed in the art upon making reference to thedetailed description and the accompanying sheets of drawings in which apreferred structural embodiment incorporating the principles of thepresent invention is shown by way of illustrative example.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a schematic view illustrating an arrangement of aself-supported power generation device in accordance with the presentinvention; and

FIG. 2 a schematic view of another arrangement of the self-supportedpower generation device in accordance with the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS

The following descriptions are of exemplary embodiments only, and arenot intended to limit the scope, applicability or configuration of theinvention in any way. Rather, the following description provides aconvenient illustration for implementing exemplary embodiments of theinvention. Various changes to the described embodiments may be made inthe function and arrangement of the elements described without departingfrom the scope of the invention as set forth in the appended claims.

With reference to the drawings and in particular to FIG. 1, which showsan overall arrangement of a self-supported power generation deviceconstructed in accordance with the present invention, the self-supportedpower generation device is operated on the basis of altitude differenceprovided by the height of a building and can be accommodated in a spaceprovided by about three floors/stories of the building, which leads to avertical height difference of approximately 12 to 16 meters. Thearrangement of the power generation device in accordance with thepresent invention comprises a water reservoir tank (10) arranged in eachfloor of the building. The reservoir tank (10) has a bottom forming aconic converged section (11) functioning to increase the speed of waterflow caused by the own weight of the water stored in the reservoir tank(10). A set of rotatable vanes (12) is arranged at a discharge openingof conic convergence of the reservoir tank with a rotor shaft of thevanes (12) coupled to a transmission of a generator unit (13) in orderto drive rotation of low-rotation-speed vanes (12), which is subjectedto speed increasing effected by the transmission to rotate the generatorunit (13) with a high speed for generation of electrical power. Theelectrical power so generated is collected in an accumulation device forfurther conversion of voltage level by a power distribution device (14)for supply to a power consuming device. In the overall arrangement, asecond reservoir tank (10) is arranged below the above-discussed firstvane set (12) and piping (15) is arranged to house the first vane set(12) below the first reservoir tank (10) so that the water flow thatdrives the first vane set (12) is guided to directly flow into thesecond reservoir tank (10) on the next floor. The water is furthersubjected to the guidance of a similar conic discharge opening todischarge and drive a vane set (12) of said next floor to effect similarpower generation. At the bottom floor, once again, a complete set ofsimilar reservoir tank (10) is arranged to similarly effect powergeneration. At the bottom of the whole arrangement of the self-supportedpower generation device, an additional water reservoir (16) is arrangedto completely receive and collect the water therein for further use. Thewater received in the water reservoir (16) is pumped by for example anunderwater pump or regular water pump back to the top reservoir tank(10) for cyclic use to generate power. The volume of the reservoir tank(10) can be designed to correspond to the overall height of each floor,and the power generator unit can be directly positioned on the floor toensure stable and secured installation and convenience of poweraccumulation and distribution and provide a particular advantage inwiring arrangement and control thereof. Besides a fraction of the powergenerated by the whole power generation system used to maintain theoperation of the power generation system, the remaining power issupplied for public use and emergency purpose for the building. In thisway, environmental conservation can be realized.

The self-supported power generation device can be installed in a publicfacility area of a building or can be arranged in multi-floor spacesformed in a basement to occupy substantially only a parking space. Thatis to say based on the multi-floor arrangement of the basement of abuilding, the reservoir tank (10), the generator unit (13) and the powerdistribution device (14) can be arranged in each of the basement floorsto realize acceleration of water flow caused by height difference, whichtogether with the speed-increasing arrangement of the conic convergedsection (11), achieves powerful and high-speed driving of the rotatablevanes (12) to operate the generator unit (13) for generation ofelectrical power. This arrangement is similar to a simplified powergeneration device disclosed in Taiwan Utility Model 132728 filed by thepresent applicant. However, the present invention is provided for use ina high building and is operated with gravity potential energy and thespeed-increasing configuration realized by the conic converged section.Thus, the whole power generation system can realize cyclic andsynchronous operation of power generation and the whole power generationsystem can be operated in a multi-purpose manner of being simplified,practical, safety, and environment conservative.

The power generation in accordance with the present invention can alsobe modified in respect of the installation position to suit differentgenerator unit. In other words, in case of a height difference of 8 to12 meters, a hydraulic power generator set of axial-flow type orinclined-impact type can be used. Based on the height difference, thereservoir tank (10) is arranged at an upper side and is provided withwater piping to guide the high pressure water flow with high potentialenergy to the site of a power generator unit (13) located at a lowerside to start up the power generation. Thus, for a building having morethen ten stories, as shown in FIG. 2, a vertically sectionizedarrangement can be employed to allow for effective self-supporting forpublic use of electrical power. The capacity of the power generationdevice ranges from 400 to 100,000 W, based on which, practical selectionof generator unit (13) can be done to realize a very practicalself-supported power generation device for a modern building. Theoverall power output is determined on the basis of the count of thefloors and the area of each floor of a building and can be designed inaccordance with the overall power consumption for public use of thebuilding, by which a medium or small sized power generation assemblyhaving a proper rating power output can be selected in to order minimizethe space occupied by the whole arrangement. All parts of thearrangement can be of standard specifications and purchasedcommercially. And, by incorporating shock-proof and sound-isolatingdesign, noise interference with residents of the building can besubstantially eliminated. Long-term stable power supply can thus beestablished to provide power for self and private use without assistanceprovided by additional power. The water flow, after used for powergeneration, can be collected in the water reservoir (16) to be pumped bya pump (13) through piping (17) back to the top reservoir tank (10) forcyclic use to generate power. The arrangement is more flexible in addingor removing some units and is thus a very economic, simple, safe andpractical power generation device.

In view of the above description, it is understood that the simplifiedpower generation device, which is operated on the basis of altitudedifference of stories of a high building by allowing water dischargedfrom reservoir tanks arranged at different floors/stories to form waterflow that drives the vanes for rotating the power generator unit togenerate electrical power. The operation is carried out by the increaseof water flow caused by gravity and a conic convergent arrangement forguiding and speed-increasing so that the vanes are driven by the waterflow to rotate at a low speed, which is converted into a high speedrotation of the power generator by incorporating an arrangement of speedincreasing of a transmission. The overall construction is simple anddoes not occupy a large space and may provide self-supported powersupply for public use of power of a high building. The effectiveness ofthe present invention is superior to the current co-generation powergenerator system.

Although the present invention has been described with reference to thepreferred embodiments thereof it is apparent to those skilled in the artthat a variety of modifications and changes may be made withoutdeparting from the scope of the present invention which is intended tobe defined by the appended claims.

It will be understood that each of the elements described above, or twoor more together may also find a useful application in other types ofmethods differing from the type described above.

While certain novel features of this invention have been shown anddescribed and are pointed out in the annexed claim, it is not intendedto be limited to the details above, since it will be understood thatvarious omissions, modifications, substitutions and changes in the formsand details of the device illustrated and in its operation can be madeby those skilled in the art without departing in any way from the spiritof the present invention.

1. A self-supported power generation device, comprising water reservoirtanks and generator units, wherein the water reservoir tanks areseparately and respectively arranged on different floors of a buildingto form a floor-spaced water reservoir system, each tank having a bottomforming conic converged section to serve as means for speed increasingfor a water flow discharged from a discharge opening in the bottom ofthe tank to thereby allowing the water flow to drive rotation of vanesarranged under the bottom of the tank, the rotation of vanes beingtransmitted through a transmission and speed-increasing means so thatlow rotational speed of the vanes is converted into high speed of therespective power generator to generate electrical power, the tank thatis arranged on a next floor being located below the vanes and coupled tothe vanes by piping to guide the water flow toward the tank of the nextfloor, which is also provided with a conic converged discharged openingto guide the water to drive vanes of the next floor for powergeneration, wherein the water is so guided to sequentially flow throughall the different floors to carry out the power generation operation andis eventually collected in a bottommost collection reservoir tocompletely recover the water used to generate power, the water beingpumped by pumping means to a topmost reservoir for cyclic use for powergeneration to thereby effect continuous power generation.
 2. Theself-supported power generation device as claimed in claim 1, whereinthe power generators are selectively added or removed on the basis ofpractical needs in accordance with addition or removal of the tanks tothereby change capacity of power generation.
 3. The self-supported powergeneration device as claimed in claim 1, wherein the power generatorunits and the water tanks are arranged in a floor-spaced manner in abasement of a building.
 4. The self-supported power generation device asclaimed in claim 1, wherein the floor-spaced arrangement is providedwith a power distribution means to distribute the electrical powergenerated.
 5. The self-supported power generation device as claimed inclaim 1, wherein the water tank is arranged at an upper floor while thepower generator unit is arranged at a lower floor and connected to thewater tank with piping in order to realize potential based powergeneration.
 6. The self-supported power generation device as claimed inclaim 1, wherein the power generator comprises an axial-flow type orinclined-impact type hydraulic power generation device.
 7. Theself-supported power generation device as claimed in claim 1, whereinthe self-supported power generation device is arranged in a sectionizedmanner based on the floors of the building so that each section isself-supported for power generation and supply.